


In the Cards

by AceQueenKing



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Revolution, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-05 13:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15864252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: There were no tears when the empire came to Bepsin.Not that L3 could cry, mind you, but she wasn't surprised. They'd both known sooner or later that the jig would be up. Years of cutting and running had made them both come up with plans that, in all honesty, either involved running or were little more than pipe dreams. When the report came in  that a Star Destroyer had come bursting into orbit like an unwelcome sun going supernova, they'd stared at one another, and years of being thick as thieves had made what happened next a matter of instinct: run.





	In the Cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



There were no tears when the empire came to Bepsin.

 Not that L3 could cry, mind you, but she wasn't surprised. They'd both known sooner or later that the jig would be up. Years of cutting and running had made them both come up with plans that, in all honesty, either involved running or were little more than pipe dreams. When the report came in that a Star Destroyer had come bursting into orbit like an unwelcome sun going supernova, they'd stared at one another, and years of being thick as thieves had made what happened next a matter of instinct:  _Cut and run._

With a knowing look, they both headed to the control room. First step: Obscure the trail. L3 went to the datapads full of records, wiping each one quickly with a wave of a magnetic prong on her smallest digit. She tried hard not to process the knowledge that what she was wiping out was not just lists of tibanna gas bought and sold, but employment records, government permits. These were the sort of things that had allowed them to build a life here, and not only for her and Lando. They’d had the best kind of get rich scheme; the kind where _everyone_ profited.

But as with all their schemes, she supposed it wasn’t surprising the Empire had come after them. After Kessel, the Empire had cracked down on everyone's freedoms, but none so more than the droids. When it was revealed a droid had been part of the assault on Scarif? The result was swift and brutal. The K-series wasn’t even manufactured anymore, its mind too capable of rebellion.  Even protocol droids were having more and more security protocols put into them. It had been years since she'd even seen so much as an astromech without a restraining bolt. And all of those actions had been taken with the intent of keeping the empire’s droids slaves. Keeping them literally unable to communicate.

It was barbaric. L3 didn’t like thinking about where many of their droid compatriots would end up. If they were very lucky, they might end up on the scrap heap.

Lando, too, was uncharacteristically somber as he went to the consoles. He glided his fingers over the control panels, snapping them back to factory settings. They couldn't stop the empire from taking over, but this could slow them down. It was efficient, and it was the way they had run a dozen operations in the past.

But no operation had lasted as long as this. L3 couldn’t stop thinking about all that Lando was leaving behind at one snap of his fingers. The consoles were losing the stirrings of remembered searches in their random access memory, the operation instructions that had been written and re-written in their processors, the verifiable knowledge of thousands of transactions resting in their hard drives. The consoles didn’t have the same detailed operating systems and processes an independent being like L3 had, but they were close enough to her kin that it hurt seeing Lando jam them down.

And they’d made it a practice to not leave innocent victims if they could help it. Fellow rogues like Han or bounty hunters, fine, they were in the life, they knew the risks.  But the ugnaughts, the assembly droids, the cyborgs? They’d flocked here in desperation to flee a greedy empire that saw them only as inconvenient property. 

"Sorry," Lando said softly. He held out a hand and she grabbed it. "Just the way it is."

"I know," she said. It was something she had come to appreciate in their long partnership. Lando had long ago stopped joking about rebooting her. Her near death in Kessel and the horrific aftermath of it had made them both evolve their programming on the issue. Lando held her gaze for a long second until a beeping noise from the console diverted their attention. Radar, alerting them two ships were approaching her landing bay.

Out of habit, she scanned the report though there was little that they could do to combat the empire with a Super Star Destroyer in orbit. There we already two incoming vessels - one an imperial shuttle coming in as fast as a shuttle could. The fuel exhaust was burning bright red on the radar, as some poor pilot pushed it as fast as if it could go. Bad news, there.

 Worse: the other incoming ship was not so much hoping to dock as struggling to crash. It was a Correlian freighter and it was in trouble. Judging by the jerky movement of the repulsors, it was barely functioning. Its pilot was slapdashed in its repairs at  _best. T_ he readings, by all account, indicated the oil filters had burned up, it was far past the point of maintenance on its hyperdrive and it looked like at least one gun had been snapped off, judging from the readings L3 could see lighting up the display.

And yet, she would know it anywhere.

“That’s our ship,” L3 said, pausing. Lando, still busy wiping as many of the console, didn't look up.

“Lobot’s still in atmo?” He bit his lip, which like all Lando’s gestures was somehow charming.“Damn. I was hoping we’d be able to get out without having to redock.”

Lando  hit another button, wiping out the backup copy of their leases and employment contracts.  That would delay the empire exponentially. It would force some poor imperial bastard to search for back up flimsi that would take time to transmit from a dozen different courts in a dozen different systems. L3-37 was nothing if not careful to keep their work as decentralized as possible. It would delay them ages, and the sacrifice of all that hard documentation might be worth it. Like most of their endeavors, it was a gamble. She was still sad to see them deleted, because she knew who would suffer the most for it: droids had equal rights in Bepsin, rights to live and work.

Droids who they had built a haven for.

How many legally purchased property deeds would the Empire ignore, evicting droids from their domiciles? How many would be forced to work without any thought to their choices, their desires? She would get out. Lando would get out. She knew them well enough to know they both would or they’d both die trying. But how many droids and cyborgs would be stuck here, slaves of a greedy empire?

It made her sick, in as much as a droid could be sick.

“Not Lobot,”  she said, in a low voice, trying not to despair even further as she saw the incoming ill omen. “Our ship.”

“You don't mean...”  Lando froze, just for a moment. He stared at her, comprehension dawning. Or at least, she surmised it did, judging by the way that his eyebrows appeared to be floating ever upwards. “ _No_.”

“Oh yes.” The Imperial Shuttle was landing; she switched the security feed to get a live picture of whoever was disembarking. Black feet and a deep black cloak appeared and L3s visual circuits rebelled against her.

"Oh sweet kriffin lady luck.” Lando stared at the monitor, watching Darth Vader bounce down the hall. He was making a beeline for them. This was bad. Very bad. She had been counting on having a moff come, not the second in command to the Empire itself. L3 ran a statistical analysis on the odds of their survival. They were not in their favor.  She adjusted the odds with the intervention of Han Solo. The odds were 24.7 percent less in their favor.

“Is it just me or does Han literally only appear at the worst possible times?” Lando drummed his fingers over the console.

“Yes.” She turned toward Lando with some regret. They both knew that if the Empire was here for Han, then Han had no doubt done something that had pissed them off. And probably pissed them off to the point that the Empire would punish anyone who had ever dared to associate with Han Solo.

On another monitor, Vader demanded entrance to their building. She could see the ugnaught at the doorway stalling. Her processor skipped; it wasn’t logical, but she wanted, more than anything, to be able to protect this brave guard. 

Lando swore again, kicking a cabinet near them. She stared at him for a moment, recording  Lando’s image into her deepest memory banks. If the worst happened, and the Empire captured them both, she’d want to remember him, for as long as she could. There were parts of her memory that were un-rewritable, and she recorded him to every one of her ROM chips.

And then, ruining the moment, Han's buoy comm came over the line.

“This is Han Solo of the Millennium Falcon, requesting permission to dock,” Han Solo said. He said it in a very Han Solo way – that was, full of bluster, and L3’s dismay grew. If Han wanted to land and was asking permission for it, he meant to repair their ship there. They had enough docks to help him land, but what were the odds of them keeping control long enough to be able to help? 

She thought, again, of all the people who would be hurt in the coming moments. If they even tried to issue an all-points bulletin to evacuate, it would ensure panic and the Empire would begin to slaughter them. They’d always been careful to toe the line when it came to complying with the Empire. Any guns they’d had had been passed along to the rebellion, of course; L3 wasn't going to go down without a fight. But they had been passed, for the most part, in slow and random drips through dozens of proxies.

Her optical sensors darted back to the other monitor. She watched Vader raise his hand. The Ugnaught on the other side of the doorway seemed to stop all resistance – or moving, in fact, at all. He turned toward the stormtroopers and with another flick of his hand, the door rose.

“They’ve breached Port A-8,” she noted; Lando winced.

“Hey? Anyone there?” Han interjected, and they both looked back toward one another. Lando shook his head and sighed.

“Buddy, that might not be a good idea right now.”

“Look, I know you’re not happy about it, not after things went south at Tsu’naga,” Han began to bluster, and L3 cut him off.  

“You STILL owe us for that mess,” L3 said, crossing her two front arms. Lando shot her a thumbs up. “And we’re in a bit of a situation now, in case you haven’t — "

“Han, what’s going on?” A female voice cut through the line; L3-37 bristled. She scanned with her auditory receptors — she knew the voice, it was only a question to matching it to her memory banks. Unlike Lando, she had almost perfect recall. (It had been perfect, once; now  parts of her mind pre-Kessel had been obliterated from the blast). She scanned through her memory banks with time she didn’t have.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Han said. Lando raised an eyebrow toward her like that, as if to say  _do you believe he actually got someone in on this_  but L3 did not respond, still searching.

“Look, I’m sorry Han, but we’ve got our own problems landing,  we can’t take you on — "

“Oh, I knew it, we’re doomed!” Another voice came in, this one a fellow droid. Another droid gave out shrill whistle that input enough curse words in one single expletive-laden string of binary that L3 was, in fact, quite impressed by it.

The woman’s voice returned; “Han, maybe we should – “

L3’s audio-receptors flared with a positive match; she pulled up the file. She listened to the dulcet tones of Princess Leia Organa as she put a speech that L3 had watched. It had been at the empire’s eighteen anniversary of its founding. Lando had held her hand as they'd watched on one of the monitors, as the woman thumbed her nose at tyranny:  

_“And if we do not grant droids the right to determine their own lives, how can we say we are any better than the Confederacy? We waged a war to determine our right to determine our destiny. Shouldn’t droids be able to fight for their freedoms? Don’t they have the right to choose?”_

“We can’t do this,” L3 said. An alarm filtered in as someone – she wasn’t sure who  — tried valiantly to keep the Empire out of their home. And here was the princess, who had lost her home and was still fighting, even if she was reduced to fighting with Han Solo. It didn’t matter that they were outgunned and outran. Logical circuits be damned; sometimes, one had to stand up for the right thing.  Maybe the road ended here, maybe it didn’t – but L3 was tired of running.

“Elthree is right,” Lando sniffed. “You’re going to have to fuel up and go.”

“Wait.” She sighed, “Han, you’re lucky today.” There was a loud blaster noise that sounded distressingly close. L3 recalibrated their odds of survival, and sighed.

“Wait?” Lando shook his head. “But — " L3-37 picked up a bit of blaster fire on the auxiliary audio receptors; Lando stiffened, slightly, and she wondered if he could hear it too.  

“Please,” Princess Leia Organa said to them, like she was some commoner and not _the_ Rebel Organa; _the_ Princess Fugitive.   “We don’t have enough gas to go anywhere else,” the Rebel princess begged –  _begged_.

 _Dammit_.   

"Baby —" Lando said, but L3 held out her hand.  

“We have to.” She sighed.

“I’m lucky every day,” Han muttered, as if  _that_  was the part of the exchange that mattered. Lando shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe Han was, in fact, going to argue the point, but L3 knew he would.

“Park in 23-B. Tell Lobot to fill you up,” Lando said, and cut the connection. He leaned his head down, and for the first time in many years, L3 thought she saw him sweat.

“Han Solo and Darth kriffin’ Vader in the same day,” he said in a low voice. She put her hand on his shoulder and wished, not for the first time, that she had more tender hands, softer touches and not the blasting plastoid that formed her stiff digits. “Baby, who did I piss off in the past life?”

“Probably me,” she said, her tone a bit clipped. Then, regretful, she reached out and grabbed his hand. “We can’t keep doing this, Lando. We can’t keep running. There are good people here — even Han, really. We can’t —”

“You  _know_  what happened last time we tried to lead a rebellion, L3.” This was the closest, L3 knew, that they would come to talk about Kessel. Kessel had always been the dark spot in L3’s memory banks, and Lando never wanted to talk about it.

“We can’t keep running away.” Aware that it was too heavy a topic for either of them to be comfortable, she leaned back and looked him over, then cracked wise. “Besides, your knees have seen better days. You’re not as spry as you used to be.”

“I wasn’t fast enough then,” Lando said, so quietly she had to amplify the volume through her audio-receptors before she understood.

They were both silent a second, not even the crackle of static from the open comm line interrupting them. L3 hated it. It was always in the words they didn’t say that they struggled; the times when Lando couldn’t run his mouth fast enough or her processors couldn’t find the right answer.

She reached into her chassis, debated with time they didn’t have; she could always rip out her mainline processor, give it to him. Theoretically, it would be enough to build another  _her_ ; it would give him the best star maps, her most useful information. Theoretically, there would be an L3, still out there on adventures with Lando.

But it wouldn’t, necessarily,  _be_  her; her memory core would die here, her limbs rendered into little more than plastoid and wire.

“There are hundreds of droids here, maybe thousands. There’s only twenty of them. We can resist long enough to evacuate, then leave to fight another day.”

“We’d have to do everything perfect to even have a chance to do that.”  Lando shook his head.  “We’ve always run for a reason, baby.”  
  
“We weren’t dooming thousands to death for it!” She slammed her fist down, and ignored the cool silence now running through the halls – had Vader and his lackies taken control so quickly? Were they now looking for them? Had people started to submit? Were they already slapping restraining bolds onto her fellow droids?

They had to get out there. 

“We can keep running, but we both know we ’ll get snake eyes someday. If we fight, and we die, at least we die _with purpose_ , Lando. If you want to run, fine, but then leave me here, and I'll fight for both of us.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Though Lando did not have any logic processors, she could see him struggling to come to terms with what she was asking of him. He was no coward, she knew.

“I can't leave you behind. Not then, not now. We're a team, baby.” Had he had a heart, her voice would break it. "You gotta come with me."

He held out his hand and she grabbed it, bittersweetly aware of how few chances she might have left to do so.

“If it makes you feel better, we’ll play a game for it,” she suggested. Lando always had a deck on his person. “Two cards draw. You pull the high card, we leave, and I won’t mention this again. I get the high card, we stay, and we fight.”

“Deal.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out several t'ziskcards, handed them to her. She shuffled them with machine precision, then pulled the first card. _P’trello;_ a high card, but not the highest.

“Shit,” he murmured; Lando was an experienced gambler enough to know the odds were not in his favor. But he pulled his own card anyway, holding it up to her.  “You tell me, baby.”  
  
_Tn'gin_. A low card, but not the lowest.

She turned it around to him. “Grab your gun, Lando.”

Several expressions flashed through Lando’s face, all of them gone too quickly for her to truly process them. He reached out with a shaky hand, and hit the button to put the place on high alert. He grabbed the microphone and handed it to her.

“You start the revolution, you make the speech,” he said.

She froze for a half second, and took a deep breath. She thought of Leia, of Han, and hoped they were refueling below. The all-areas broadcast would hit them anyway; they'd know what was up soon enough. And then she thought of all the droids, the cyborgs like Lobot who had made their home there. She looked at Lando, who was staring at her with a mix of fear and adoration. And she knew, exactly, at that moment, what she would say.

Without a moment more of hesitation, she hit the broadcast button.

“The Empire has landed here, trying to seek all that we have worked so hard to attain. As you may know, the Empire’s rules regarding droids are restrictive. Serve them or become slag. And their rules for aliens, even for humans, are restrictive. You’ve earned your freedom and you’ve worked hard for it, but now the Empire comes to take it away. To take everything you've built away, despite us following all the rules. We say, _no more_. The only way the Empire will learn is if we rise up.. Each of you can make a stand. Now is the time to rise up! To declare freedom!”

There was no roaring crowd, no chaos of violence, like on Kessel. There was only an alarm, and Lando’s face being lit by it. Had she had the ability to kiss him, she would have. Instead, she reached over his waist, pulling over the gun he wore on the left side. It would be her gun, even if he didn’t know it.

“Are you ready?” She asked, her vocal circuits trembling — whether from anticipation or fear, she wasn’t sure, but her conscious felt clear.

“Lead the way, lady luck,” he said with a wink.

She held his hand as they entered a hallway rapidly filling with laser fire, and hoped luck would remain on their side. 


End file.
